How to Compress Video Files on Mac

A ten-minute 4K screen recording can top a gigabyte, and a phone full of holiday clips fills a Mac fast. macOS ships two built-in ways to shrink video without installing anything — and when you need real control over the size-quality trade-off, HandBrake covers the rest.

Fastest: the Finder quick action

Finder can re-encode video without opening a single app:

1. Right-click the video file (or select several).
2. Choose Quick Actions → Encode Selected Video Files.
3. In the Settings menu, pick a target. HEVC (High Quality) keeps the original resolution but switches to the far more efficient H.265 codec; picking a lower resolution like 1080p or 720p shrinks the file further.
4. Click Continue. A new encoded copy appears next to the original — nothing is overwritten.

HEVC (H.265) typically lands around half the size of H.264 at similar quality, so this one menu is often all you need. Because the original is untouched, the "undo" is simply deleting the new copy if you don't like it. This quick action is available on macOS 13 Ventura, 14 Sonoma, and 15 Sequoia.

QuickTime Player's Export As

When you want to preview the video first, or trim it before compressing, use QuickTime Player:

1. Open the video in QuickTime Player.
2. Choose File → Export As and pick a resolution — 1080p, 720p, or 480p.
3. For 4K and 1080p exports, tick Use HEVC in the save dialog for a substantially smaller file.
4. Save under a new name.

Resolution is the biggest lever you have: exporting 4K footage at 1080p cuts the pixel count by 75%, and for anything watched on a laptop screen you'll struggle to see the difference.

Not sure what you're starting from? Select the file in Finder and press Cmd+I — the Get Info panel's More Info section shows the dimensions, and the file extension plus size tells you the rest of the story. A minute of 4K H.264 video runs roughly 350–400 MB from an iPhone; the same minute at 1080p HEVC lands nearer 60 MB. If a file is already small for its length, it's been compressed once and squeezing it again buys little.

HandBrake when you want control

The built-in tools give you presets and nothing else. HandBrake — free and open source — adds constant-quality encoding, bitrate targets, batch queues, and frame-rate control. If you have Homebrew:

# install HandBrake
brew install --cask handbrake
# undo: remove it later
brew uninstall --cask handbrake

A sane starting point: pick the Fast 1080p30 preset, then in the Video tab switch the encoder to H.265 (x265) and set the quality slider to RF 24–28. Lower RF means higher quality and bigger files; nudge it until the result looks right for your footage. For screen recordings with lots of static UI, HEVC at RF 26 routinely produces files a tenth the original size.

Before you delete the original

• Watch the compressed copy — skim the whole thing and check the audio — before trashing the source. Compression is lossy and one-way.
• Keep originals of irreplaceable footage. Compress the copy you share; archive the master of anything sentimental to an external drive instead.
• Don't re-compress repeatedly. Each generation degrades quality. Encode once, from the best source you have.
• Mind compatibility. HEVC plays natively on Apple devices from 2017 onward and most modern platforms, but if the file is headed for an old PC or unknown web upload, H.264 remains the safest bet.

Compressing screen recordings specifically?

Screen captures have their own tricks — recording a smaller region and capturing at the right resolution beat any after-the-fact compression. See our dedicated guide to compressing screen recordings on Mac.